The handfuls of USDS cuts final week hit groups like product administration, design, and procurement. Kamens and different sources informed WIRED that he’s the one individual from the USDS engineering workforce who was fired. He and others speculate that he was focused as a result of he had been publicly vital of DOGE within the weeks earlier than the USDS cuts. DOGE didn’t return a request for remark about his elimination.
Whereas all massive IT techniques must be protected against hacking threats, Kamens says that essentially the most pressing tasks he was engaged on on the VA concerned containing veterans’ delicate private knowledge so it might solely be saved in essentially the most guarded elements of the system and deploying stronger controls to restrict who might entry what data. Each understanding how knowledge flows by means of a system and limiting entry to scale back threat from community intrusion and insider threats have emerged as key safety priorities for any group.
“My largest concern that I used to be attempting to deal with in my time on the VA associated to non-public well being knowledge and private data, PHI and PII, ending up in locations they weren’t speculated to be,” Kamens says. “And, in my view, our entry management, whereas it was OK, was not as robust because it ought to have been, which means I don’t assume we had sufficient granularity over controlling who had entry to what knowledge.” He provides that tasks he was spearheading to deal with these considerations are actually at excessive threat of stalling out.
The impacts of the cuts at VA, in addition to the USDS cuts that can even have an effect on the veterans’ company, are nonetheless coming into view. However along with doubtlessly hampering initiatives to enhance digital safety, the reductions could have an effect on the efficacy and reliability of the digital protections which are at present in place.
Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington and the vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, hosted a digital press convention on Wednesday with former federal staff from her state who have been lately terminated. One, Raphael Garcia, is a disabled Military veteran who had been working as a administration analyst for the VA.
“I coordinated IT system entry so that each workforce member had the correct instruments,” Garcia mentioned throughout the occasion. “I managed vital compliance and operational controls whereas sustaining fixed communication with stakeholders nationwide.” He added that whereas his termination is a private hardship, it’s also a “stark reminder that our federal authorities is dismantling its central help system for veterans and weak communities.”
For his half, Kamens, who spent his profession previous to USDS within the personal sector, says that he got here to like authorities work, and it is going to be troublesome to seek out one other job as rewarding.
“There have been these interviews all of us needed to do with the DOGE individuals the day after the inauguration,” he says. “In mine, one in every of them requested me to explain what I used to be doing at VA after which mentioned one thing like, ‘When you’re doing all that work, why aren’t you working within the personal sector the place you may be making twice as a lot cash?’ And I mentioned, ‘As a result of I don’t care in regards to the cash. I care about serving veterans.’
“I feel the truth that somebody requested me that query in any respect is basically telling.”
